Fancy night at the opera

For Valentine's Day this year, I knew I needed to come up with something really good.  By the middle of February, the winter days are short and the cold weather can lead to cabin fever.  What a better gift to give a super mom, but a night at the Opera and a nice dinner for some culture and adult time.  I knew I had the perfect gift.

When booking tickets, a random Tuesday night in March was about the closest time I could find a decent show at the National Theater of Munich for an Opera that still had tickets.  Of course, a little research would show that this is perhaps because it was Fasching (Fat Tuesday)!  Only a couple weeks before the show did we realize this schedule conflict.

So, after a great afternoon out with afro wigs, we went home to prepare for the Opera.  On the way home Sarah told me she had laid out her nicest pant suit for the show, to which I relied, "Sarah, we are going to the Opera in Europe!  We need to get dressed up."  After booking tickets the same night as Fasching, this was mistake two.  Forcing your wife into a dress after being at drunken party in afro wigs with only 20 minutes until the babysitter comes is like calling an audible at the last play of the game.  Needless to say, she looked great, but the change cost me a taxi ride as no lady dressed like that rides in the subway!

We then had a great early dinner at a fancy restaurant near the Opera in Munich.  My Valentine's Day gift was really turning out to be perfect despite the date and dress incident.  Little did I know this would all quickly change.  But first, here are some pictures of inside the theater.  Really a beautiful place. 

I was lucky the place was so nice because I knew I had booked some of the cheaper tickets in the theater's balcony seats.  But as you can see as they go straight up, I figured it couldn't be that bad!  After walking flights and flights of stairs, we entered this gorgeous theater to find people sitting in what we thought were our seats.  We checked with the attendent and in fact people were in our seats.

Picture this, Sarah is a gorgeous dress and heels, me in a suit.  We just took a taxi to a nice dinner and entered this gorgeous old theater, to find our seats were not seats, but stehplatz.  For those non-German speakers out there, this directly translates to standing place.  That's right, in the picture above, our "seats" were behind the rail in the back of the picture with our butts against the wall.  It seems these seats are popular as you can see from the markings against the wall and the fact that people were not in our seats, but in our places and the attendant had to ask them to move (I figure to even a higher standing seat!)

Really classy.  The tickets did seem like a good deal, but I figured it was just due to the thin air in our bleacher seats.  Now I know it can get worse than just being in the nose bleeds.  To my credit, the booking site only had an 8 point font warning that SP stood for stehplatz, but not even on the booking page!  So my first opera was quite memorable.  We were all dressed up, stood against a rail in the top section against the back where we had to lean down to see the German subtitles above the stage for an Italian Opera.  Needless to say, we sat through intermission and we took a taxi home as well.  Happy Valentine's Day!